The New Book Review

Showing posts with label Nonfiction: Poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Judith Skillman Review Poetry by Carol Smallwood

Prisms Particles, and Refractions
by Carol Smallwood
 Finishing Line Press
2017
$18.99 [paper] I
ISBN: 978-1635342338
85 pp.

Review by Judith Skillman Originally for Scarlett Leaf Review

Carol Smallwood’s new collection, Prisms Particles, and Refractions, is at once playful and serious. Her work in this volume ranges from extremely concise poems such as “On Days of Slow Rain” where the speaker becomes “a child again / longing to read / darkened tree bark/like Braille” (53) to the four-page oeuvre written in journal form, “A Late Summer Diary.” The fact that these two poems are neighbors makes the transition between short and long more emphatic, and creates echoes and resonances.

As Smallwood deftly moves through a variety of content and subject matter, the reader gets a sense of an unpredictable world, despite the anchor of a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. Facts are posited, yet not accepted as givens. For instance, in “We See,” the persona examines exactly how we do see and absorb light, and questions knowledge imparted during college years. Here, the title becomes the first line: “We See / with rods and cones I learned / in college—it may not be true/today…” (13). As this poem deepens, mirrors, faces, and sacrifice come into play, as well as the automatic adjustment made by the retina from upside down to right side up. This piece is emblematic of Smallwood’s gift—focused examinations that lead to “aha” moments for both writer and reader.

The poems in this book have been published in many journals. Clearly the art of poetry is one Ms. Smallwood has lived and learned. Her forms range from cinquain to villanelle to sestina; she switches from formal to free verse with ease. The myriad references and allusions in these poems draw from philosophy, psychology, physics, metaphysics, history, and literature.

“A Prufrock Measurement” (74) employs playfulness and formal rhyme in order to merge two vastly different subjects—contemporary fast food proliferation with the persona of Eliot’s Prufrock. This willingness to draw from disparate sources creates a prismatic effect: varied and brilliant. In the introduction, Smallwood states her intention to present poems “aimed at capturing…aspects of light…and light as metaphor.” It is this reviewer’s sense that she has succeeded.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com. She also review for Scarlet Leaf Review, https://www.scarletleafreview.com

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Jendi Reiter Reviews Em Jollie's Poetry

Field Guide to Falling
by em jollie
Website https://www.facebook.com/emjollie
Genre - Poetry
ISBN-10: 0997347201
ISBN-13: 978-0997347203
Name of reviewer - Jendi Reiter
Published in Reiter's Block, Jendi's blog -
Link to buy book - best to buy directly from emjollie@gmail.com but also available on Amazon

Reviewed by Jendi Reiter originally for her blog, Reiter's Block

Western Massachusetts writer em jollie’s new poetry collection A Field Guide to Falling (Human Error Publishing, 2017) is like a stained-glass cathedral window: even in scenes of suffering, the glorious colors give joy and uplift. Much of the book processes the aftermath of breaking up with a beloved woman, though at the end, the narrator seems to find a new beginning with another partner and a greater sense of herself as complete and sufficient. But this therapeutic summary can’t do justice to the mystical meaning of her journey. The speaker bravely walks up to the edge of everything we consider permanent, looks into the clouds swirling above the bottomless gulf, and finds a way to praise their ever-changing shapes. These poems imply that the value of falling–in love, out of love, out of Eden into a world of loss–is in how it challenges us to keep our hearts open, to say Yes despite it all.

Specificity keeps these classic themes fresh. A lesser poet would risk pathos with the extended metaphor of “How to Set a Firefly Free” as a farewell to a relationship where love exists but is not enough. This poem works because it is a real firefly first, a symbol second.

Firefly, suddenly setting aflame cut crystal hanging
from ceiling fan pull-chain. Greenish glow in each facet
while all night dogwood salts dark-wet sidewalk
flowers ripped gloriously open in rainpour.

Isn’t that a love poem all by itself? Those “flowers ripped gloriously open” already remind you of your own worthwhile heartbreak, whatever that was. The ending, which makes the personal connection explicit, only confirms what you felt it was about from the very first lines.

…If only
I didn’t know why lightning bugs blink.
If only I wasn’t so wise to the fact that your light
does not belong to me, will not ever.
If only I didn’t know that was right.

So naturally I just Googled why lightning bugs blink. Wikipedia says the trait originally evolved as a warning signal to predators that the bug was toxic to eat, but now its primary purpose is to communicate with potential mates. This dual meaning of sex and death confirms the speaker’s sad verdict on this love affair, which earlier in the poem she compared to the bond between a neighbor and his snarling dog: “[w]e said they were so mean they belonged together. Yet there/was something sweet about the belonging.”

jollie has one stylistic tic that I understand is common to the Smith College “school” of poetry, which is the occasional (and to my mind, random) omission of “a” and “the”. I’m sorry to say this is a pet peeve of mine. It creates a missing beat in the rhythm of a sentence, which distracts me. It’s fine to twist grammar to make a more compressed line, but I feel that this works best when the entire poem is written in an unusual voice, not when a single part of speech is excised from otherwise normal English.

jollie has kindly allowed me to reprint the poems below. It was hard to choose just two! Buy her book here.

Object Constancy

Sand can be grasped in a palm, yes. But wind
will take it eventually. Heart is body’s hourglass,
holding its own beginning
& end, its constant ticking tipping moment into
granular moment, for a while. You could take my skull
in your hands, but you will have to give it back
at some point. As will I.

Sure, Freud’s nephew came to understand
that Teddy Bear was just over edge of crib when it
disappeared from sight. But where is that Teddy now,
if not in some museum, curators desperately
fighting its inherent impermanence? Presence has to be
interrogative, doesn’t it, rather than declarative?
Dust is still dust. What I mean is: how
do I trust more than what I learned in the chaos
of childhood when since then I’ve been ingrained with loss
upon loss, like every human walking wings of light
through time?

Feather the paintbrush of my fingers across your jaw.
Feather the paintbrush of your fingers across my jaw.
We color each other for this moment. Just this one.
Then it’s done, days like hungry teeth devouring
endless could-have-beens into the finite sacred what-was.
I say: I love you (I have no choice)
What I mean to say: I let go (I have no choice)

****
A Few Desires, or How to Hunger

I want to be the malleable soap
your hands sculpt as you cleanse yourself,
as ordinary and as daily and as caressed as that.

I want to be the cutting board, that firm surface
you can lay edges against, that allows you
to divide roughage from nourishment.

I want to be the pillow case, containing all
the softness for resting your public face
and the slim canvas you play your private dreams onto.

Let me suds into joining the stream of water
down the drain, become the bamboo board
oiled so many times until finally, split, I am

placed on the compost pile. Let the laundry
tear my threads until, like the pillow case,
I cannot contain, but let every thriving thing seep out.

But in truth I can be none of these things,
just this tiny self loving you, accepting your gifts,
providing what sustenance I can in return.

In other words, use me up, until I am done with myself.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jendi Reiter is a poet, novelist, and principal of the essential WinningWriters.com where she often judges for their sponsored poetry contests. She also blogs at Reiter's Block. Find quotations from Rumi in many of her signatures:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"There is a morning inside you, waiting to burst into light."
~ Rumi

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ). This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Sunday, October 8, 2017

How-To Book for Beginning (And Not-So-Beginning!) Poets

How to Write Classical Poetry

Subtitle: A Guide to Forms, Techniques, and Meaning

Coeditors: Evan Mantyk, Connie Phillips

Publisher: Classical Poets Publishing, 2017;

156 pages; $19.99

Paperback available on Amazon

Illustrated

ISBN-10: 1546853316

Submitted by Carol Smallwood, author of In Hubble’s Shadow (Shanti Arts, 2017) and In the Measuring (Finishing Line Press, 2017)

How to Write Classical Poetry: A Guide to Forms, Techniques, and Meaning is divided into three parts. The first is why great poetry is still useful today. The second is how to write specific forms such as the haiku, triolet, villanelle, rondeau, terza rima, limerick, rubaiyat, pantoum, sestina, rhupunt with examples of them as modern and classical poems. The third is ten of the most famous from such giants as Robert Frost, William Shakespeare with discussion about each poem.

As a writer and reader I’ve often wondered what exactly makes a formal poem or a free verse poem and how does a sonnet differ from a villanelle—and what about rhyme and/or meter? Or more basically, what makes meter? The classical forms of poetry in my experience are not often covered in creative writing classes so this guide is most timely.

An example of its usefulness is the section about the sonnet divided into four levels:

Easy: A Sonnet in 10 Minutes

Medium: Rhyme-y Poetry

Medium-Difficult: Poetry with Rhyme and Structure

Difficult: Sonnet in Iambic Pentameter and Careful Attention to Meaning

The guide includes a painting selected as a subject to write about with steps on writing with samples of each level of difficulty in composing.

“The Mechanics of Classical Poetry” a six- page discussion of rhyme and meter: terms to understand better such as iamb, trochee, and couplets, octets. “How to Write a Poem Like ‘The Raven,” a 11 page discussion about how the poem is written (deciphering the meter), a modern example, and writing one of your own.

The Society of Classical Poets, the publishers of the book, was formed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization to foster good poetry as well as formal poetry in 2012. You can subscribe and have free formal poetry e-mailed to you on their website: http://classicalpoets.org. One of the editors, Evan Mantyk is a teacher and the President and Editor and they accept poetry, essays, reviews, and offer competitions, annual journals, and much more on their visually stunning, constantly updated site. The Society has members around the world with a physical location in Mount Hope, New York.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Michigan Quarterly Reviews Smallwood's Newest Poetry

In Hubble’s Shadow

By Carol Smallwood

Published by Shanti Arts, 2017 Brunswick, Main

98 pages, $14.95, paperback

Available on Amazon

Reviewed by Stephen C. Holder, Ph.D , Professor Emeritus, Central Michigan University, originally for Michigan Quarterly Review May 16, 2017

The successful writer must, of course, have a solid understanding of language and usage. The creative writer needs a much rarer quality: the ability to communicate insights and visions, to offer new and often challenging perspectives, to make the abstract concrete, to portray emotion. In her fine collection of poems, In Hubble’s Shadow, Carol Smallwood shows all these qualities, and more. At first reading, these poems seem quite different from one another; repeated readings, however, reveal thematic similarities which make the inclusion of the poems in one volume more than appropriate. Those already familiar with Smallwood’s work will be glad to read these poems side by side. Those new to Smallwood’s world can expect to be charmed by her artistry and vision.

Smallwood writes clearly and accurately. Her fine vocabulary allows the reader ready access to a visual participation in the poems, without the distractions of complex wording. The varied figurative language, especially metaphor, helps to make the invisible visible, leading to both certainty and conjecture. Simple images, such as the dandelion in the sidewalk crack or ice in lemonade, invite us to compare our own experience and find meaning where there was none before. More complex, but equally intangible experiences can be found in poems like “Rearrangements,” which explores the aftereffects of covert child abuse, although each victim is different.

In this collection many of the short, yet complete. For example, in “The Sugar Beet Field” the last word, “regret,’ compels the reader to return to the opening line, “Acres of low green flourish,” and contrast “flourish” with “regret.” Smallwood seems equally adept in longer forms, as in the narrative “Dreams of Flying Sestina.” She occasionally makes use of repetition, much like Robert Frost. The opening and closing lines of “Dirt Roads,” for example, drive home the theme of the poem: “Dirt roads as reality checks are to be recommended.”

Throughout the collection, the commonplace always suggests more. A good example is the transcendental quality about “Ode to Mud” that connects dirt roads in the spring to man’s small place in the universe. This is the sort of musing that showcases the artistry of Smallwood’s poems. In her universe everything is related to everything else, both in time and space. The concrete becomes an abstract vision of life. In “Water, Earth, Air, and Fire” we see both ancient and modern attempts to gain access to universal mystery; the concluding allusion to blind Teirasias, who could see better than the sighted, connects to the modern dilemma of the speaker of the poem. Indeed, the distance between the poet’s intent and the reader’s response is considerable in many of these poems. As we are reminded in “Wind in Trees,” “the story lies with the interpreter.” And, of course, reality is often invisible and “seeing is believing” is not always true. In “They say” Smallwood ponders black holes and other phenomena, but concludes, “And yet, who has seen the wind?” Probably, this lack of concrete certainty is not a bad thing, however. “It Rained Today” ends this way: “It’s good we don’t know that//much about rain.”

Carol Smallwood’s gift of sharing her experiences and reflections with her readers somehow makes us we know her and like her. She is realistic but not cold. Her insights become ours. She leaves her readers asking for more.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Award-Winning Poet takes on Kafka

Kafka's Shadlow

Author: Judith Skillman

Published by Deerbrook Editions, Cumberland, Maine

$16.95

ISBN: 978-0-9975051-4-6

Available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Kafkas-Shadow-Judith-Skillman/dp/09

Reviewed by Carol Smallwood originally for Compulsive Reader

A contemporary American woman poet takes on an awesome task when writing about a male fiction writer in another era (1883-1924) composing in German in what is now the Czech Republic. Judith Skillman, the recipient of an Academy of American Poets and included in Best Indie Verse of New England is to be commended for this unique collection.

Kafka had a few works published in his life, yet his influence spreads beyond literature to philosophy--his charters meeting bizarre circumstances, alienation, and absurdity. The title of the poetry collections comes from one of Kafka's letters and is also the title of one of the the poems.

Poems such as “Dearest” and “Felice Ponders” employ the point of view of the woman who wants to be his wife, though Kafka never marries. Skillman uses details like bulgur wheat, her stiff collar, and a train ride from Prague to Berlin to portray the couple’s relationship and culture. “Tuberculosis,” which ends his life at 40, is written from Kafka’s point of view, with borscht soup waiting to cool, his father sleeping in a chair, and the image “fat pigeons sun themselves in winter light.”

There are several poems examining the relationship of Kafka and his father through Biblical allusions, most notably the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac. Kafka’s character and his world reveal themselves not unlike layers of an onion. We feel we know them better with each poem. Three pages of notes at the end of the collection include details such as the word “pater” means father, as well as background quotes from Kafka’s many letters.

It takes a lot of craftsmanship to have readers get inside the personalities and the culture of the characters in poems based on scholarship and detailed research—a huge task; all of the poems stick to the topic of Kafka and explore aspects of his family and his times. The last of the 47 free verse poems, “Kafka’s Nocturne,” uses revealing lines in its penultimate stanza: “Rumination and obsession—/guests who sit on the bed he won’t occupy/ with a lover….”

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Carol Smallwood is a multi-Pushcart nominee. Her In Hubble’s Shadow (Shanti Arts, 2017) is her 4th poetry collection. Her Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching (McFarland) is on Poets & Writers Magazine's list of Best Books for Writers.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Kristin Johnson Awards Science Poetry Book Five Stars

Unmaking Atoms
By Magdalena Ball

Genre: Poetry/ Poetry: Science

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Ginninderra Press (January 11, 2017)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1760412821

ISBN-13: 978-1760412821

Author's Web site:

Buy the book

Rated: Five stars

Reviewed by Kristin Johnson, reviewer, author and consultant

Magdalena Ball, the author of eight collections of poetry (several in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson) as well as two novels and a nonfiction book, The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything, is a multifaceted author, but her specialty is verse, especially scientific, astronomical and physics-themed poems, with threads of anthropology, zoology and biology.

From a cursory review of the titles, you might not think the verse offerings and prose poems (there is at least one, a prose/verse hybrid) have anything to do with protons, neutrons and electrons. Titles such as “Pranayama,” “Gargantua Redacted,” “Woman with her hair loose,” “Most of Everything is Nothing,” and the intriguing “Shallots and Garlic” (based on an Indonesian/Malaysian folktale) all seem on the surface to be more literary than scientific.

Look deeper. Look with the wonder that physicists have when they observe the atom. Like atoms, words combine to make different elements, different states of energy (passion, anger, fear, celebration, grief). So it is with Unmaking Atoms.

How, exactly, can one unmake atoms? Through nuclear fission. How, exactly, can one unmake the illusions of our human lives? Through poetry fission.

In the first poem of the collection, “The Last Report of the Day,” Ball introduces a recurring theme that hovers throughout the collection like cosmic radiation: the death of a parent, specifically a mother. She references a renowned woman poet in the opening line.

“I saw you, Adrienne Rich.

In my dream we were

walking like old friends

conspicuously cool

our maps drawn

before we took up pens

eyes searching for something

deeper than the wrinkles on our skin.

I felt your hand, crooked with arthritis

brush mine

in the depths of my consciousness”

How do the longing for an absent mother and a famous poet as a mother-figure in this passage relate to atoms? Or this verse in the next poem, “Charitable Crumb”:

“mother, father, siblings, lovers

the loss that kept coming

like water

suspended over blue-grey stones.”

Loss, specifically the loss of a mother, is the atom at the heart of this collection, split and reassembled in myriad ways with a dizzying elegance and versatility. Although the poetry examines birds, exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, “loamy” soil (a favorite word in the collection), paintings as the subject of several ekphrastic poems (poetry that is in response to a work of art), yellow jacquard sofas, the sense of loss and wistfulness, of losing oneself in nature, science, literature and art, create the atomic chain reaction and the “Atomic Mess” that, in essence, is death. Those who have lost a mother will probably be saying, “She gets me, she understands,” when they read “Yellow Jacquard.”

However, matter cannot be created or destroyed, and this collection unmakes, and then reassembles, the words and images as well as emotions including the sense of joy that permeates Ball’s lyricism. That joy manifests in a “laugh that shakes the floor,” the line and curve that brings wholeness, a light “softer than the cut of love.”

The reader encounters surprises, such as anger and yearning for the same person/subject within the space of a few lines:

“your feathers rise

poison in your beak

brightens the plumage

rainbow body, earth to water

water to wind

all I know: the taste in

my mouth says find you

find you find you”

The “you” in the poem has “poison in your beak,” and yet Ball’s narrator yearns for the subject. A subtle commentary that what we love is not always sentimental or full of hearts and flowers, and that loss is painful.

We often create meaning, and different elements, by unmaking and reassembling aspects and details of our lives, misconceptions and words said and unsaid. This is the power of Ball’s poetry, especially in this collection.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kristin Johnson is a prize-winning/prize finalist writer, blogger, ghostwriting/creative writing consultant, screenwriter, and editor. A graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program from the University of Southern California, she has published/collaborated

on six books and has ghostwritten several books (and scripts) for clients that acknowledge her contribution. The Internet etiquette self-help book AIN'T "U" GOT NO MANNERS (A Vegas Publisher) is her latest book.
Visit http://www.augnm.com/ and http://www.kristinjohnson.net.
She is on Facebook at facebook.com/AuthorKJ, facebook.com/augnm.

Find her on Twitter @AuthorKJ.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Holiday Gift: Imperfect Echoes Supports Amnesty International

Imperfect Echoes
Subtitle: Writing Truth and Justice with Capital Letters, lie and oppression with Small
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Cover and Internal Art by Richard Conway Jackson
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781515232490
Available on Amazon as e-book or paper
Finalist USA Book News
All Proceeds Support Amnesty International

Holiday Gift for the Thoughtful Person on Your List

REVIEWED BY MARLAN WARREN, originally for Midwest Book Review

Narcissus knows her reflection

well. She forgets to peer

under burkas, in our jails,

in the beds of the abused,

deeper, deeper into the pond...

From Narcissus Revisited a poem

in Imperfect Echoes.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s “Imperfect Echoes: Writing Truth and Justice with Capital Letters, lie and oppression with Small” is just perfect. This Los Angeles award-winning poet lays out the landscape of her contemplative thoughts, feelings and reactions with such honesty and deceptive simplicity that they have the effect of offering a peek into her private journals. What puts this poetry on par with leaping tall buildings is the fact that each poem manages the feat of conveying personal and universal relevance at once.

Do not be scared off by the prospect of political rhetoric masquerading as literature; this is not one of those books. Although the book's subtitle may strike some as rather lofty, it is a quote from Czeslaw Milosz's poem, “Incantation,” in his anthology, “The Captive Mind,” which reflects Howard-Johnson's poetic themes. She has divided her prolific poems into a Prologue plus four sections: “Remembering What We Must”; “Nations: Tranquil Self-Destruction”; “Acceptance: Waiting for the Gift”; and “Future Stones of Distrust.”

Howard-Johnson deftly blends the "Truth and Justice" observations with the "Small" moments of "lie(s)" and "oppression" as they intersperse through her poet's journey. The poems in “Remembering What We Must” address the stark realities of war and global misery, which Howard-Johnson treats with her practiced light touch that floats like the proverbial butterfly and stings like an outraged bee.

In “Belgium's War Fields,” she compares the reasons for bygone wars to our present day confusion: “And now a war that takes from the mouths /and hearts of the stranded, the homeless. / How different from those who / marched with snares or flew flags / in a war when we knew / why we were there.”

In the “Nations: Tranquil Self-Destruction” section, “The Story of My Missed Connection in Minneola” brings to life a brief rest stop during a road trip, which seems rather amusing at first as the wife relieves her bladder and the husband declines the coffee with “Let's skip it. Coffee's / probably been stewing for days...” but hits an unexpected bump of overt bigotry when the roadside store owner confides in them (in between the screeches of his pet parrot) that he left Los Angeles to get away from the “ragheads.”

In the “Acceptance: Waiting for the Gift” section, “Relatives” takes on the ways in which "Small" minds can make a family dinner feel like a stint in Purgatory: “Perhaps you won't invite me back / if I mention that infamous / uncle. You know, the one who killed / three of his wives / but is candid / about who he is, / how many he's killed, / the methods he used / and never gets invited to dinner.

In the “Future Stones of Distrust” section, “Rosa Parks Memorialized” opens with “On the day our September losses / reached 2,000, a tribute / to Rosa...” and asks “If she were alive now.../ would her solo / be enough or do we need now a choir singing, / thousands screaming...?”

Imperfect Echoes allows readers to witness a poet's lifetime revisited in memory and with fresh wisdom. If the topics of oppression, prejudice and war seem to some "overdone," Howard-Johnson responds in her Prologue poem, “Apologies from a Magpie”:

Magpies are born to sing others' songs

stained notes, imperfect echoes—

until the world begins to know

them by heart.

Note: Proceeds from the sales will be donated to the non-profit human rights watchdog, Amnesty International.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Marlan Warren is an L.A. journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, blogger, and publicist with Roadmap Communications[http://tinyurl.com/RoadmapCommunications] and Book Publicity by Marlan [http://Book PublicitybyMarlan.blogspot.com]. She reviews for the Midwest Book Review [http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/nov_15.htm], and her blogs include “Roadmap Girl’s Book Buzz” [http://roadmapgirlsbookbuzz.blogspot.com] and “L.A. Now & Then [http://losangelesnowthen.blogspot.com].” Her press releases are published in Broadway World Book News and the BBC Record. She is the author of the novel, “Roadmaps for the Sexually Challenged: All’s Not Fair in Love or War” [http://tinyurl.com/qj92dhr] and the producer/writer of the acclaimed documentary, “Reunion” [http://www.directing.com]. Marlan is currently producing/directing her documentary “What Did You Do in the War, Mama?: Kochiyama’s Crusaders ” based on her play “Bits of Paradise” [http://sites.google.com/site/bitsofparadisethemovie/home].

ABOUT THE NEW BOOK REVIEW

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Pages

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Judith Skillman Review Poetry by Carol Smallwood

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Jendi Reiter Reviews Em Jollie's Poetry

Sunday, October 8, 2017

How-To Book for Beginning (And Not-So-Beginning!) Poets

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Michigan Quarterly Reviews Smallwood's Newest Poetry

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Award-Winning Poet takes on Kafka

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Kristin Johnson Awards Science Poetry Book Five Stars

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Holiday Gift: Imperfect Echoes Supports Amnesty International

Holiday Gift for the Thoughtful Person on Your List

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